Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Trip to the Georgia Aquarium

We took a field trip to the Georgia Aquarium using a special deal found online called "Me and Mommy" tickets... it was $25 for one adult, up to five children age five and under, and it also included a free parking pass (normally $10). The aquarium is so very expensive otherwise, so we took advantage of this! It is about an hour and a half away from us, so we made a whole day out of it last Friday!

the girls observe some jellyfish

There are many huge tanks in the aquarium, 20 feet tall and more... this is the first big one that we came to.

This is probably the biggest tank in the aquarium... it contains four whale sharks, among other things (like huge rays, small sharks, a hammerhead or two...). The whale sharks were shipped here from Taiwan via UPS!

This is the same tank, going through the underwater tunnel

I think this fish could swallow CC whole!

This window was so huge that the girls felt the need to lay back to look up at it all!

Looking at the piranhas, for Uncle Stephen (he used to have a piranha in a tank in the basement in my parents' house!)
This was cool... a low, convex (or concave??) window that the girls could look through while I took their photo through another side of the piranha tank

This is a whale slide in the Georgia Coast area... there were a few areas to play/climb in here.

Caroline coming out of the whale slide

I am not quite sure what to make of the decor in this place... it was only built in 2005 or so... but it looks a bit 80s in the middle section!

Lunch - reasonably priced for children, outrageous for adults. Each of these PB&J sandwich boxes with cheese and grapes cost $3. I was pleasantly surprised! Of course, you cannot bring in your own food.

Beluga whales


I personally think beluga whales are kind of ugly... it seems like many people love them, and maybe that is because they are really graceful swimmers and interesting to watch, and not because they are attractive animals! Or maybe I have poor taste in beauty!

The penguins were fun to watch - they would swim right up to the glass where we were standing, like they thought we were going to feed them or something, ha ha. We also crawled through a tunnel and were able to pop up in the middle of the penguin tank to see them up close on the rocks.

After the aquarium, we stopped off at Gramma's house to visit for a little while before heading home... a tiring but fun day!

2 comments:

Carrie said...

Interesting. We haven't been to the GA Aquarium yet, mainly because of the steep prices. We had a membership at the TN aqua last year and kind of got "fished out" ha ha.
Which do you prefer, GA or TN?
That's a great deal on tickets! Neither of mine are under 5 anymore :(

Erin said...

Well, back when the TN aquarium only had one building, I thought it wasn't that big a deal, but now that it has two buildings, it is great. I went to the GA aquarium back during its first year, and it was so, so crowded that I didn't really enjoy it and liked the TN one better. but now that I have been on a day where it is not packed, it was probably equally as good. It has more big, open viewing areas than TN. When I was first there, it was so crowded that it took a really long time to get from one window to the next, which made it seem like there was a lot of empty space. If you can move about freely, it doesn't seem like there is so much wasted space.